News and Events Insights

Innovation Day 2012 a time to inform and inspire

BOSTON, Mass. – On February 14 from 1 to 5 p.m., Children’s Hospital Boston, will hosts its first “Innovation Day.” In a series of 17 short sessions, cutting-edge approaches to improving care delivery and quality while lowering costs will be presented by the innovative leaders at Children’s Hospital Boston.

The event is sponsored by the Innovation Acceleration Program (IAP), an 18-month-old program at Children’s Hospital Boston charged with building resources to support the innovation process and removing obstacles to hospital-based innovation. The IAP is led by Chief Innovation Officer Naomi Fried, PhD. “Our group focuses on enhancing the culture of innovation that thrives at Children’s. We support a wonderful community of innovators with funding, software development and advice,” says Fried. “Children’s innovative environment coupled with strategic support of innovation has resulted in some outstanding contributions to medicine and science.”

Innovation Day is an opportunity to witness first-hand innovative ideas being turned into products, technologies and new care delivery models to improve the care of children. Some examples:

Peter Laussen, MBBS, is revolutionizing real-time data to catch critical care crises before they happen. His T3 project aims to develop a scalable and portable visualization and intelligent early warning system to prospectively track the clinical course and trajectory of critically ill patients, and allow critical care clinicians to move from prescriptive and intuitive decision making to one that is predictive and analytic.

Eric Fleegler, MD, MPH, andEugenia Chan, MD, MPH, have developed a web-based program designed to capture in real time how a child with a chronic condition responds to medications when he is away from hospital. The Integrated Clinical Information Sharing System (ICISS) is a monitoring and management system that gathers real time (rather than recounted by parents weeks later) information from patients, parents, teachers and others care takers to monitor a child’s health and functional outcomes so clinicians can accurately assess and adjust medication regimens. Its goal is to improve care coordination, decrease unnecessary healthcare utilization, enhance clinical decision-making and identify variations in care for defined patient populations.

“OpenPediatrics” is a cloud-based teaching platform designed by Jeff Burns, MD, MPH, and Traci Wolbrink, MD, MPH, to aid and supportclinicians around the world. By harnessing the global reach of the Internet, the latest knowledge can be shared instantly, providing clinicians with life-saving information anywhere at any time. “OpenPediatrics” is a comprehensive, continuously updated, and peer-reviewed knowledge exchange platform dedicated to providing multimedia and interactive teaching for physicians and nurses who are caring for critically ill children. Developed in collaboration with IBM, the March 2012 beta launch will include 1,000 users in hospitals across six continents.

Thanks to the “Back to Sleep” campaign, babies are spending more time on their backs, causing their skulls to flatten, a condition known as plagiocephaly. But not every child needs to be evaluated by a neuro- or craniofacial surgeon. A web-based program, designed by neurosurgeonJoseph Madsen, MD, helps determine if a child can be referred to the Children’s brace shop for a plagiocephaly helmet. In consultation with pediatricians, parents use cell phones and digital cameras as diagnostic aids and send their photos to a website for Children’s experts to review. This telemedicine solution is enhancing efficiency, lowering specialty consult costs and saving parents time and needless worry.

Delivering much-needed oxygen to the bloodstream during critical times, such as asphyxia, cardiac arrest and hemorrhagic shock can be very challenging. John Kheir, MD, has developed an oxygen micro-bubble foam that can be injected directly into the bloodstream, delivering lifesaving oxygen when and where it is most needed.

Developed by John Brownstein, PhD, HealthMap is an online resource utilizing informal sources (e.g., newspaper articles, eyewitness reports, expert-curated discussions and validated official reports) for disease outbreak monitoring and real-time surveillance of emerging public health threats. Through a website (http://healthmap.org) and mobile app ('Outbreaks Near Me'), HealthMap delivers real-time information on a broad range of infectious disease outbreaks. The system publishes online information about emerging diseases in nine languages, providing a view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on health and facilitating early detection of global public health threats (e.g. H1N1 influenza).

Hiep T. Nguyen, MD, and his team is developing an implantable device for more effective dialysis, calling it “Holly I.” The device functions as an “artificial kidney” with the benefits of both hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis.

Eye drops often provide quick relief to patients suffering from minor eye problems such as redness, itching and dryness, but much of the dose isn’t absorbed. Doctors have found that drops do not work very well for more serious chronic conditions such as glaucoma. Prototype multilayer lenses, developed by Dan Kohane, MD, PhD, are a form of a contact lens that sandwiches medicine between two layers of polymer film and administers large doses of medication at constant rates over extended period.

An invention called BEAPPER (Bidirectional Electronic Alert Patient-Centered Provider Encounter Record) developed byDebra Weiner, MD, PhD, is an iTouch/iPhone app designed to track a patient’s progress through the Emergency Department (ED). Coordinated care requires that every member of busy multidisciplinary medical teams has access to timely information about their patients’ test results, imaging studies and specialty consults so they can make expedient care decisions. BEAPPER facilitates communication between emergency department providers about shared patients and provides clinician support resources, improving care delivery, parent satisfaction, and ED through put.

Pierre DuPont, PhD, is developing new robotic technologies and surgical tools to convert intra-cardiac repairs to percutaneous, beating-heart intervention. The innovation behind this technology enables the fabrication of tools with design features that cannot be achieved by any other manufacturing process. While developed for intra-cardiac surgery, both the robotic platform and the tools are applicable to many other types of surgery including neurosurgery, urology and orthopedics.

The event will be held in the Folkman Auditorium, Enders Pediatric Research Laboratories, Children’s Hospital Boston, at 320 Longwood Avenue, Boston, Mass. The event will also be live streamed here. Please call the telephone number above or email for free parking information.

CONTACT:
Rob Graham
617-919-3110rob.graham@childrens.harvard.edu

Founded in 1869 as a 20-bed hospital for children, Children’s Hospital Boston has been ranked as one of the nation’s best pediatric hospitals by U.S.News & World Report for the past 21 years. Children’s is the primary pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest provider of health care to Massachusetts children. In addition to 395 pediatric and adolescent inpatient beds and 228 outpatient programs, Children’s houses the world’s largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries benefit both children and adults.More than 1,100 scientists, including nine members of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 members of the Institute of Medicine and nine members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute comprise Children’s research community. For more information about the hospital visit: www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom.

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We are grateful to have been ranked #1 on U.S. News & World Report's list of the best children's hospitals in the nation for the third year in a row, an honor we could not have achieved without the patients and families who inspire us to do our very best for them. Thanks to you, Boston Children's is a place where we can write the greatest children's stories ever told.”